Ari Goldman

Ari L. Goldman has been teaching at the Journalism School since 1993. He is the director of the school’s Scripps Howard Program in Religion, Journalism and the Spiritual Life. The Scripps Program has enabled Professor Goldman to take students in his “Covering Religion” seminars on study-tours abroad during spring break. In the past, his class has visited India, Russia, Ukraine, Ireland, Israel, Jordan and the West Bank.

Students who have studied with him have become religion writers at The Chicago Tribune, The Miami Herald, The Baltimore Sun, The Raleigh News & Observer, the LaCrosse (Wisconsin) Tribune and many other publications.

In addition to the religion seminar, Professor Goldman also teaches Reporting, the Master’s Project and a course called “The Journalism of Death & Dying,” which looks at everything from writing obituaries to covering natural disasters and suicide.

Before coming to Columbia, Goldman spent 20 years at The New York Times, most of it as a religion writer. In addition, he covered New York State politics, transportation and education. He was educated at Yeshiva University, Harvard and Columbia. Goldman was a Visiting Fulbright Professor at Hebrew University in Jerusalem; a Skirball Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies in England, and a scholar-in-residence for a semester at Yeshiva’s Stern College for Women.

Goldman is the author of four books: "The Search for God at Harvard," a New York Times Notable Book in 1991, "Being Jewish: The Spiritual and Cultural Practice of Judaism Today" (2000), "Living a Year of Kaddish" (2003) and “The Late Starters Orchestra” (2014). He frequently contributes articles and reviews to The New York Times, The Washington Post, Salon, The New York Jewish Week and the Forward.